As the country has gone into lockdown Active Essex is ensuring that community organisations, clubs and the local workforce are being supported and have access to the latest information to help them through this period.
Funding Webinars
When Sport England announced the £195 million support package and Community Emergency Fund, we quickly got together some content together for a Community Emergency Fund webinar which aimed to:
- make it clear to clubs and organisations who was eligible,
- the costs they could apply for and some tips when applying to the fund.
- reinforced that we were on hand to help all clubs and organisations through the process of applying, as well as signposting those not eligible to other support available to them.
We delivered three sessions before Easter encouraging organisations to get applications in as soon as possible as we had heard early that there were 1000s of applications being submitted.
How we communicated with our network
To get the word out, we sent the opportunity to our mailing list, subscribers to our ‘core market’ newsletter, our 14 local authority Active Networks, the association of local councils, voluntary services, youth services and NGBs which resulted in us having 101 total live attendances over the three sessions.
Our webinar can now be accessed on our YouTube channel which we sent to those who attended the webinar, along with a word document of the application questions which we encouraged organisations to complete and send to us prior to applying if they required help.
Who attended the webinars?
On the webinars, we typically attracted traditional sports clubs, multi-sport and social clubs, fitness and martial arts organisations and also a number of small charities and CICs whose focus ranged from refugee support to animal therapy. We also had a number of CVS staff, active network members, NGB officers and local authorities on the webinars who have since helped clubs and organisations on their patch apply to the fund.
Of organisations who attended the webinar, 6% were placed in top 20% most deprived wards in the country, 33% were top 30% and 52% were placed in the top 40%.
One to one communication
After the webinars, our team began to proactively reach out to more organisations across Essex with a particular focus on calling clubs and organisations placed in the 20% most deprived wards in the country to make sure they had heard of the fund and that they knew we were on hand to support their application if required.
What we learnt
- From our care calls, we have found that the majority of non-asset owning clubs do not require emergency money, but are concerned about post recovery, are uncertain over future membership and who will return to their club.
- We have typically found that many clubs and organisations have had to cancel important fundraising events and activities and one of the biggest losses of revenue has been from expected bar takings.
- There are also some organisations slipping through the net who are not eligible for the small business grants from the government, nor for grant funding because of their structure. This is a common issue we were aware of prior to the COVID pandemic from our fundraising workshops we have delivered over the past year.
- For organisations who typically work with LSEG communities and whose sole purpose or focus is not physical activity, we have typically found them to be very busy supporting local community hub efforts.
How have we responded
- We have been offering advice around staying in contact with their members and signposting those concerned to resources on our website and through clubmatters to ensure they are not seeing this period as a break, but an opportunity to do everything they can to come out of this in the strongest position possible.
- We have booked dates for Clubmatters workshops in May focusing on legal structures and planning your future as a response to feedback we have received.
- We have offered reduced costs consultancy to clubs and organisations looking at becoming a CIC, changing their constitution or their legal structure which has received excellent feedback.
- We have put considerable resource in supporting the set up of community hubs across Essex which ensure those most vulnerable across the county are getting the support they need
- Our place-based approach has put us in an excellent position to be able to play an important role in brokering relationships between organisations on a local level and Essex County Council to get these operating as quickly and efficiently as possible.
- As well as signposting and supporting local community organisations to emergency funding, we have encouraged them to spread the message to their communities that it is more than important than ever to keep physically active and to aid them, we have a dedicated webpage page (see below).
- We’re continuing to support the physical activity sector and are due to have our second NGB forum in the next couple of weeks to share best practice and discuss how best we can work collaboratively when lockdown ends
Dedicated webpages
To help navigate the support and resources available, we have a dedicated page set up which we have split into sections which will hopefully aid people get to the relevant information they need.
Each section on our page has a pdf which consists of all the latest information and support available. Alongside this we have created short voiceovers of each section for a social media campaign.
We have a dedicated webpage page to keeping Essex active, which has a busy timetable of mental wellbeing, being active as a family and low intensity exercises which are all delivered by Essex instructors, coaches and teachers.